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Lentil Puree & LA Soubise

A lentil puree finished with a brown onion sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 132 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentil Puree & LA Soubise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lentil puree

  1. Rinse the lentils and boil them in water for about 4 hours until soft.

  2. Skim off any dark film that rises to the surface.

  3. Strain the soup through a wire sieve, rubbing the contents through to create a smooth puree.

Make the soubise

  1. In a separate pan, slice and fry the onions in butter until brown.

  2. Boil the fried onions in some of the soup broth until tender.

  3. Strain the onions and add them to the soup.

Reheat and serve

  1. Stir the soup constantly while reheating to prevent burning.

  2. Serve the soup, stirring before each serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lentils + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lentils + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,221 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + spinachtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,583 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Break down into a thick, smooth body that gives the puree its structure.
Onions
Soften and brown in butter, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the soubise.
Butter
Fat that browns the onions and adds richness and flavour.

The step that matters

Stir the soup constantly while reheating. The puree is thick and rich in starch and sugars, so it sticks and scorches on the base of the pan easily. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and prevents burnt flavour.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, onion, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, onion, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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